Lyra's Dare
by Nubushi
Summary: Lyra plays Truth or Dare with Silver and Ethan at her twentieth birthday party and picks Dare. LyraxLance. One-shot fluff.


Silver scowled at the two others sitting in a circle with him, their knees almost touching. He would say he wasn't sure how he got talked into this, but one word pretty much explained everything.

Lyra.

"You have to flap your arms and squeak like a crobat," pronounced the object of Silver's ire.

It was hard to refuse her when she said she wanted to relive childhood memories by playing this game on her twentieth birthday. But despite being an adult already, the dares that Lyra came up with were all stuck in sickening childlike innocence. Of course, he hated doing embarrassing, childish things like this, so the dare served its purpose, he supposed. He stood up and flapped his elbows halfheartedly, turning in a circle, and emitting some noises that might have been a bit more like grunts than squeaks, to Lyra's amusement and Ethan's ridicule.

Having finished the task that was required of him, he sat down again.

No matter how embarrassing and childish the dare was, there was no way he was going to pick truth-he had too many secrets.

But it seemed like not a single one of them wanted to tell the truth tonight.

"You have to kiss the person you like," Ethan said when Lyra, too, chose Dare.

Now they were into teenage stuff, and Silver reflected briefly on whether it was better than the kiddy dares that Lyra came up with or worse. He wasn't sure, but Lyra predictably turned as pink as a slowpoke, which in fact she resembled, though her head was not totally vacant but filled with nonsense about believing in pokemon and people.

"But I don't know if Lance is awake right now," she said, and promptly turned a shade redder as she realized what words had just come out of her mouth, only slightly faster than a slowpoke realizing its tail just got bitten. Vulpix-color, maybe? Silver didn't know much about color names, but whatever this shade was called, it was pretty vivid.

"No problem," Ethan said, agilely snatching the pokegear from Lyra's belt. "We'll just have to call him and find out."

Lyra, with less than excellent reflexes, reached out after it and fell on her face as Ethan held it out of reach. Some scrabbling ensued, ending with the two of them in a rather interesting position, during which Lyra's face failed to return to its usual shade, and Ethan's colored to match it. Watching with the clinical dispassion of an ethologist observing a mankey tribe, Silver concluded that the two of them must have some not-so-childlike thoughts in those heads after all.

Lyra beat a remarkably hasty retreat, and Ethan held the pokegear up triumphantly with the smug look of a meowth that just caught a magikarp.

Lyra protested in vain that it was too late at night, that calling at this kind of hour would be making a nuisance of themselves.

"Too late," Ethan said, pressing the call button, and they all heard a distinctive "Hello?" on the other end. Then he held the speaker up to his ear, blocking out the next words that Lance said.

". . . No, this is Ethan. . . . Oh, did I wake you? I'm _so_ sorry. . . . No, nothing's wrong, it was completely by accident. I was just getting out Lyra's pokegear because she has her hands full right now" (this was now a true statement, as Silver, now slightly interested to see how this scenario would turn out, was holding Lyra's arms against her sides with one arm and covering her mouth with his other hand to restrain her renewed attempts to reclaim her pokegear) "and I guess I pressed your number totally by accident, you know how it is with touch screens," Ethan concluded with the accomplished glibness of an experienced liar.

Silver had to admit he was impressed. He had no idea Ethan could make up lies that smoothly. Another short pause ensued.

"Well, now that you mention it, I do think she wanted to meet you tomorrow if you're free. . . . Lyra, is ten o'clock okay?"

Lyra couldn't say anything with Silver's hand over her mouth. Though Silver couldn't see her facial expression, she was shaking her head "no" with vigor. Ethan, however, barely even sparing a glance for her, forged on in the affirmative.

"Okay, you too. Good night," Ethan said, concluding the call.

Now that he thought about it, Silver had a sneaking suspicion that proposing a dare that couldn't be done on the spot wasn't anywhere close to being within the rules.

But Lyra seemed far too flustered to realize this, and he wasn't going to be the one to bring it up and let her off the hook.

It served her right for making them play this game.

* * *

The day of Lyra's doom dawned bright and sunny, pidgeys and spearows filling the air with song just like any other day.

Lance appeared at their designated meeting spot punctually, a mild and calm expression on his face, as was usually the case when he wasn't in the middle of a battle or ferreting out a nefarious crime syndicate.

"Hi Lyra, what's up? Did you want to have a rematch?"

"No, um, actually, I have a surprise for you." She had been coached to say this last night, after Ethan's phone call to Lance, and at Ethan's insistence had practiced it a dozen times, but she could still feel heat rising to her face. "So, um, could you close her eyes?"

He did look at her a little strangely, cocking his head in puzzlement, but said "Sure" and closed his eyes obligingly.

Her whole body was trembling with nervousness like she had never felt in a pokemon match, but there was no way to back down now. She carefully stole closer to the dragon trainer and stood up on her tiptoes to brush his lips with hers.

* * *

Lance's eyes flew open again in surprise when he felt the unexpected touch, hesitant and scarcely more tangible than the brush of a pidgey feather.

"Eh? Lyra?"

"I'm sorry, I, um . . ." she stuttered, blushing adorably and looking up at him bashfully through her eyelashes.

"No, no, it's fine, but why all of a sudden . . . ?"

"Well, it's just, Silver and Ethan and I were playing a game last night where you have to either answer a question truthfully or do a dare, and mine was I had to kiss the person that I like, so . . ."

Her blush deepened as her realization of what she had said followed a little belatedly behind the words themselves. "I'm sorry, I didn't plan to confess this way . . ."

He smiled, half in amusement and half in affection. "Lyra, you don't have to apologize," he said, and drew her into his arms.

Her flustered agitation calmed in response to the tenderness in his voice and the feel of his arms around her. She lifted her face to look at him, hope starting to dawn in her eyes, creating the perfect opportunity for Lance to bend his head for a gentle, lingering kiss.

When they parted again, he said, "I like you too," smiling as he gazed into her eyes.

* * *

From where the two of them crouched behind a convenient screen of bushes, Ethan grinned in satisfaction and elbowed Silver in the side. "I knew it, see?"

At first, Silver had only been reluctantly dragged along to their outings by Lyra, leading to a bit of an uncomfortable stretch as a friendship that had previously been between two childhood friends shifted to accommodate a rather prickly boy a bit older than either of them. But as time passed, Ethan had not merely gotten used to his presence, but had started to think of the dour young man as a friend.

He was rewarded with a scowl. "You are such a tanuki."

"What's a tanuki?"

Silver made a dismissive gesture. "Don't you trouble your head about it. It's just a fictional pokemon that doesn't really exist."

"Well, you're a cyndaquil, so there," he bandied back, taking the redhead's advice and letting the mysterious insult roll off him like water off the back of a farfetch'd. He knew he was a busybody, and he supposed Silver's arcane insult probably meant something along those lines. But who else was going to get these two together? How many years had it been since Lyra, in the course of defeating Team Rocket once and for all, had gradually started to fall for the dragon handler? He always seemed to be a supportive presence in the background, ready to stand by her side and help her when she needed it, but completely trusting in her ability, believing that she didn't need his help most of the time. And she still hadn't said anything to him—until today, that is.

"Someone had to do it," he said, and watched in satisfaction as Lyra and Lance walked off together, hand in hand.

* * *

A/N: Calling someone a "tanuki" means they are a sly/devious person. Please review!


End file.
